


cold inescapable truth

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Coming Untouched, Compulsion, Eldritch Horror Smut, Exhibitionism, I almost literally don't know what this is, I don't know folks I wrote four pages of this at 4 am without my glasses on, Kneeling, M/M, Religious Fanaticism, i guess?, oh boy I'm not even sure how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 18:50:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21081410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: There is nothing to do but kneel and answer every question put to him and allow the Archivist’s steady staring eyes to flay him open down to every screaming nerve.Elias and the Archivist have a conversation.





	cold inescapable truth

**Author's Note:**

> ....well. I bitched about not being able to find the eldritch horror smut I craved, and I was finally moved at 4 AM to be the change I wished to see, etc, etc. So. Here...we are. It took me two months to finish this because my computer crashed.
> 
> The title is from "Put It On Me" by Matt Maeson, which is the _most_ Jonathan Sims song in existence.

“Sit up straight.” It’s not a request. It’s not even an order, not really, it is—it is an edict. It is a statement that something is expected, and that the expectation will become a fact of reality. 

Elias forces his shoulders back, keeps his chin up, and tries not to gasp in a breath, in the spare moment of space. The Archivist paces around into view again, passing Elias’ right shoulder, crossing in front of him, through his field of vision, and then out again, with the slow and considering stride of a jungle cat. Elias keeps his head up, keeps his hands flat, and the Archivist is quiet for a moment, the only sound the soft rasp of Jon’s worn oxfords on the carpet and the increasingly ragged intake of Elias’ breath. The Archivist rounds him again like the passing of the moon, and pauses, in front of Elias, facing him.

The weight of the Archivist’s gaze is a tangible thing, Jon’s normally wild brown eyes flashing gold in the light of Elias’ office—strange, the way they seem almost backlit, when even after decades in the Archive, Gertrude had always looked thoroughly human. But then, Jon is such a very good Archivist. Elias does not clench his hands into fists, keeping them firmly in place on his thighs, but the feeling of being _Seen_, of the Archivist choosing his—_its_—next target enough to make him tremble with the ecstasy of it. Elias’ cock presses hard against the seam of his trousers, against the line of the zipper, until it’s almost painful, and Elias does not move his hands.

After another moment of consideration, the Archivist opens its mouth and asks, unblinking, “What did you think of my CV, when I first applied here?”

The compulsion hits with a blow like an axe, or a twenty pound sledgehammer, or the entire fucking sky, falling down. It doesn’t tingle anymore—it _jolts_, like touching a live wire and feeling household current skip along fragile human nerves and wreak havoc on the electrical nodes in heart and spine. Elias feels a breath escape him, a helpless exhalation of pleasure at the pure strike of power, and he very nearly closes his eyes.

He doesn’t, because he has been told to keep his eyes open, and because the Archivist is still staring him down, its eyes open and fixed in Jon’s scarred face, and Elias cannot look away from something so beautiful.

Distantly, Elias hears himself beginning to speak—talking about seeing potential in Jon’s files, about seeing his whirlwind university career and his thesis on supposed “ghost” sightings in the Tower of London and their connections to various historical upheavals, about how Jon was a historian and not a library scientist and about how Elias had thought he might make a better academic. About how the Eye had thrust the Sight of a Lietner in front of Elias, when he had first touched the paper, and about how Jon had been doomed from the start.

Elias doesn’t know what he’s saying and doesn’t try to. The Archivist’s compulsion will take care of it, will ensure that he tells the truth and the whole truth. All Elias has to do it hold still, kneeling here, and give himself over to his god on Earth.

This is not like giving a statement. There is no unearthly calm, no poetic turn of phrase. Elias is speaking smoothly, but plainly, without the touch of personal flair that marks the taking of a direct statement. He is more supplicant than sacrifice, but supplicating to something like the Archivist is bleeding out on the altar, is putting the knife to his own throat, is ripping his heart out bare handed and offering it, dripping, to his god.

Elias cannot stop a shudder that wracks him, hard, but it does not affect the steady report of how he had come to hire Jonathan Sims.

The Archivist circles him again as the last words of the answer fall from Elias’ lips, and it comes to a stop in front of him. Elias blinks, blood pounding in his ears, and notices, with the sort of idle interest that has won him so much favor in the service of Beholding, that Jon’s sweater has an ink stain on the cuff, and that there is a scorch mark near the hem. He waits to Know where it came from, but all of the Eye is staring at him right now, and he cannot touch it. He is a single mote of dust, being observed in its entirety by the Archivist’s blazing stare, and he is not privileged to know Jon’s secrets right now.

Maybe the Archivist Knows that the moment has occurred, that Elias expected to Know something about Jon and therefore about the Archivist itself, but if so, there’s no sign. Only the same laser focus and attentive head-tilt.

In exactly the same tone as its previous questions, the Archivist asks, “When did you first make yourself come, thinking about fucking me?”

The answer boils up, and Elias cannot stop it. He does not want to stop it. There is no shame or humiliation in him, no space for anything but the need building toward pain, and the ecstatic joy of the ritual. He answers each question put to him, helpless to do otherwise, and kneels on the floor of his own office as the Archivist stares at him, prowling slow counter-clockwise circles as Elias goes from pleasantly aroused to nearly blind with the need to _touch_.

It had not started this way. Jon had come to Elias’ office, angry, as Jon was always angry when he saw Elias now. Elias had walked from prison directly back into his post, unbothered, and had greeted Jon with the same cool fondness as he ever had before, and he and Jon had stared at each other for a moment, and Elias had Known about the woman in the coffee shop, about the man in the grocery store, about the man on the boat. He had smiled, faintly, and had not needed to say _good job_, nor _I knew you were the right choice_, because Jon Knew he was thinking so.

Elias didn’t mind not being their god’s best beloved. He loved the feeling of fitting into the design, of being able to see the board play out around him even though he controlled so very little of it, and he enjoyed being of service, being Known and Seen and kept for his usefulness.

There was something supremely satisfying, he would admit, to knowing that even Jonathan Sims, who tried so hard to fight what he was, who tried so hard to hate Elias for what they had both made of Jon’s life, still needed Elias so very badly.

The conversation had ended quickly, because Elias Knew that Jon needed—something else. That he was hungry, the raw craving of the Eye to be fed something new rather than stale scraps of old statements pressing through. Jon had snarled, and Elias had calmly raised and eyebrow and said, “There’s no need to take that tone.” And then Elias had kissed him, standing smoothly to push Jon backward against the desk and kiss him hard and hurting, biting Jon’s snarling lips until Jon parted them and let the kiss deepen, some intangible thing settling in him under Elias’ touch.

“There,” Elias had said, against Jon’s lips, his hand coming to settle on the back of Jon’s neck like half of a collar. The heavy iron chain of a prisoner, but of course for Jon, his cherished Archivist, nothing but gold would do. Elias imagined that, sometimes, Jon chained in gold to the corner of his desk. “If you need something from me, you need only ask.”

Jon had made an angry noise, the start of another rant, and Elias had covered his mouth again with his own, and kissed him again, and closed his hand tight around the nape of Jon’s neck.

Elias had already decided, in a split second’s consideration, what he would ask of Jon—something to bring him down from this thoughtless overwrought state, something to put him firmly in his own bones so as to turn him loose more thoroughly himself. Or rather, more thoroughly the self that he had been lately, the self who did not become overwrought and needy at the idea of finding someone with a statement to take. It would soothe Jon, to be pushed down to the floor and told to suck Elias’ cock, to be shuffled under Elias’ desk like an afterthought and told to keep quiet and still with Elias’ cock in his mouth while the expense reports were examined. 

And then, settled more evenly into himself by having the weight of decision off his shoulders for a time, Jon could be set back on his path, and he would go on taking care of himself better than before.

Using the hand on Jon’s neck, Elias had pressed down. Jon never went to his knees sweetly, not really—he was not, Elias could admit wryly, a sweet-natured creature in any state. But he normally went compliant, almost relieved, when Elias forced him to his knees, as if being allowed to believe that he had no choice in the matter eased him. 

It was quite a charming misapprehension, Elias privately thought. After all, Elias was a servant of the Eye, and Jon was the Eye’s pupil, an open channel to the world so that light and shape and information could flood through to their god. If Jon had not wanted it, had not _chosen_ it, Elias would never have done it.

This time, though, Elias pressed down with the force of the hand on Jon’s neck, and Jon had quite simply refused to bend. Jon was willowy, trending toward malnourished, but he was an avatar, and if he did not want to go, Elias could hardly make him. It was a known but unspoken fact of their odd détente. Nonetheless, Jon’s eyes had snapped open at the attempt and he had made another sound—this one, not typical of Jon at all.

The rumble in Jon’s chest had been so deep and steady that the sound shivered Elias’ bones. Then Jon had turned his head slightly to look Elias in the eye, so that his brown irises caught the light and seemed to flame with gold.

“No,” the Archivist said, all of Jon’s anger suddenly gone and replaced with riveted attention—nothing so mundane as curiosity, nor interest. It was like standing under sunlight and then being placed under a magnifying glass, so that the gentle pressure of Beholding that always clung to Jon sharpened into the sudden and immediate knowledge that Elias was Beheld.

“No?” Elias said with what anyone would agree was impeccable poise, holding back a pleased sigh at the abrupt weight of his patron’s regard.

“No,” the Archivist confirmed.

And then there had been a quick moment of motion, too fast for Elias to even really register what precisely had happened—maybe the Archivist hadn’t laid a finger on him, it was quite possible that Elias had simply seen fit to fold because he Knew it was expected of him. Maybe the Archivist had fisted a hand in Elias’ hair, or kicked Elias’ knees out from under him. He wasn’t entirely sure, and that unsureness—the knowledge that the Knowing was being kept from him intentionally—had him gasping and hard by the time he realized that he was kneeling on the carpet at the Archivist’s feet, hands splayed on the floor to hold him up, as if he was supplicating himself at an altar.

“Kneel properly,” the Archivist had said, in Jon’s own familiar tones of bored annoyance. It had wiped away the calm thought that had risen through the daze, of going the rest of the way to the floor and prostrating himself flat like a cardinal newly robed in red, on the floor of a cathedral. 

Sitting back on his heels, Elias had fixed first rumpled suit jacket and then posture—back straight, toes bent under him so that his knees took much of his weight, hands flat on his thighs. The position showed off his suit and silvered hair to good advantage, but did nothing to hide the line of his cock already straining at his trousers.

“Am I satisfactory?” Elias had asked coolly. 

The Archivist hadn’t answered, had simply begun to pace and had asked in that even, interrogative voice, laced heavily with compulsion, “What were you planning, after you had me on my knees?”

It has been some thirty minutes since then, by the clock to the right of Elias’ door. Thirty minutes of Elias talking, answering question after question about what he thought of Jon, of the Archivist, the utterly inane—Jon’s _CV_, honestly—interspersed apparently at random with the thoroughly lewd or downright cruel. Even the slightest slump in Elias’ posture, unconsciously trying to ease the pressure of his zip on his straining cock, earns a correction. Not even the slightest twitch of his thumb, up his own inseam, escapes the Archivist’s attention.

There is nothing to do but kneel and answer every question put to him and allow the Archivist’s steady staring eyes to flay him open down to every screaming nerve.

It is ecstasy, raw and unadorned.

“When did you first begin thinking about me doing this to you?” the Archivist is asking now, as inexorable as ever—unruffled, in fact. It is a stark contrast, Elias is aware, to his own state, shaking with the need to put a hand on his cock.

“Oh,” Elias says with a laugh that sounds a bit cracked to his own ears, “Years ago. The moment the Corruption knew you as a threat, I knew you were a good choice for Archivist.” 

He doesn’t wait for the next question, can’t, the compulsion too tight around his throat to do anything but continue—to talk about how Elias had thought about it idly, from time to time, at fist. About how he had thought about it rather more than idly, after he Knew that Jon was beginning to compel answers out of civilians. About how, after Jon had finally turned his compulsion on Elias, Elias had waited until the war party was gone, had watched Jon return to his office at last, and had stroked himself off, fast and ruthless, at his desk.

“What did you picture?” the Archivist asks.

“I imagined Jon’s office—your office. I pictured going down, to ask how your investigation was going. Whether you had come up with some brilliant, half-cocked plan yet, to kill me. I imagined you sitting there with your tape recorders and your files. You would look up at me when I came in, and—do you know, I thought you would probably be angry. Angrier than before, I mean. You knew that you could compel answers from me, and I imagined that you would demand them, force me to tell you everything I knew. I could—I could practically taste it, the way you would drag every detail out into the light.” Elias might be embarrassed, under other circumstances, that his voice breaks over the admission, but he is past embarrassment, _well_ past, if he ever really had the ability to be embarrassed by this. He is skin and need and the bone-shaking sensation of being Seen, and there is no space left for something like shame.

“I imagined you sitting there with your files and your tape recorders, and demanding every secret I had ever known or forgotten or guessed at,” Elias says, breathless. His cock _aches_ against the seam of his trousers, the kind of hot, dull hurting that begs for release at any price, and Elias presses the tips of his fingers slightly harder into his thighs. Elias Bouchard has never begged for a thing in his life and he certainly won’t start now, but—

“Fix your hands,” the Archivist says, disinterested. It takes the effort of a thousand lifetimes to flatten his hands out, back into the parody of lax patience the Archivist has chosen to suit its interest, but Elias obeys.

He has never begged, he will not start now, but he wants to scream. The world has gone hazy around him, colored syrupy gold with his loss of focus. Reality, all the vast Knowledge of the Archives that Elias has had at his beck and call for so long, has narrowed to the pressure threatening to shatter him, to the half-delirious joy of being so exposed, to the all-encompassing desire to come.

“Tell me the rest,” the Archivist says. It has stopped its prowling, standing before Elias and observing him with a kind of calm detachment. Elias hears his own voice, oddly detached, spill the rest of the fantasy—of Jon pushing him down, of the Archivist demanding answers and information, of the touch of his god’s first, best servant making him writhe to the sound of Jon’s voice. The Archivist’s expression doesn’t even flicker.

Elias thinks, dimly, that it would be easier to bear this if the Archivist cooed over him like a pet, or if it gloated, or if it did anything except flay him alive with steady stare and steady questions. The Archivist is an icon painted in jewel tones and precious metals, a divine masterpiece unaffected by human desire. It does not care what would make this easier for Elias. He’s not even sure it cares if he enjoys being the subject of this Beholding, or if this is simply its due, a tithe claimed from Elias’ body and soul.

The moment the thought crosses his mind, it spills from his lips, the compulsion still booming through his bones as he says, “You could do this another way—any other way—but you don’t care.”

“I don’t,” the Archivist agrees flatly, gaze fixed on Elias’ face.

Elias has barely a moment to realize that coming is going to _hurt _before it sweeps over him. It hits Elias like a star exploding, scattering the pieces of an existence to the far reaches of space, and he comes apart in a blaze of light.

When he blinks, chest heaving, dizzy and almost sick with relief, up at the Archivist, Elias is a bit startled to find that he is still kneeling, exactly where he was told to be. The only things that have moved are his hands, the nails digging into his thighs as if he had to fight to keep them there. He is still dressed, his shirt unwrinkled, his suit jacket unmarked. There is a stain marking his trousers, over the place where his pants chafe his oversensitive cock, but otherwise, he is untouched. He feels as if he has been vivisected.

The Archivist looks down at Elias. Elias looks back, and thinks to himself, to Beholding, to his god and his Archivist and any other being who might care to look, that he would worship at this altar for the rest of eternity, given a fraction of a chance.

Elias has never felt such devotion in his life as he does when the Archivist says, “That was—interesting.” The blaze of light in its eyes has begun to fade, ever so slightly, and Elias thinks it’s Jon who walks past him to the desk, to turn off the tape recorder and slip it into his pocket.

Whoever it is, they leave without another word.

**Author's Note:**

> May we all live through the season finale, I guess.


End file.
